"La dernière marche", un film de Tim Robbins, extrait 2
Que valent mes convictions sur la peine de mort quand ma fermeté n'a jamais été mise à l'épreuve ? Personne parmi mes proches n'a été abattu d'une balle dans la nuque. Si ma mère, ma soeur Mary Ann ou mon frère Louie, venaient à disparaître sauvagement massacrés ? Ma magnanimité ne vaut pas cher, je le vois bien. S'il arrivait qu'une personne que j'aime soit assassinée, j'éprouverai rage, douleur, impuissance et un immense sentiment de perte, c'est certain. Et ces sentiments m'accompagneraient peut-être jusqu'à la fin de mes jours. Je ne prétends pas savoir de manière infaillible quelle réaction serait la mienne devant une telle tragédie. J'essaie seulement de suivre la voie du Christ.
I have no doubt that we will one day abolish the death penalty in America. It will come sooner if people like me who know the truth about executions do our work well and educate the public. It will come slowly if we do not. Because, finally, I know that it is not a question of malice or ill will or meanness of spirit that prompts our citizens to support executions. It is, quite simply, that people don't know the truth of what is going on. That is not by accident. The secrecy surrounding executions makes it possible for executions to continue. I am convinced that if executions were made public, the torture and violence would be unmasked, and we would be shamed into abolishing executions. We would be embarrassed at the brutalization of the crowds that would gather to watch a man or woman be killed. And we would be humiliated to know that visitors from other countries - Japan, Russia, Latina America, Europe - were watching us kill our own citizens - we, who take pride in being the flagship of democracy in the world. (p. 197)
"Nonviolence and nonaggression are generally regarded as interchangeable concepts - King and Gandhi frequently used them that way - but nonviolence, as employed by Gandhi in India and by King in the American South, might reasonably be viewed as a highly disciplined form of aggression. If one defines aggression in the primary dictionary sense of "attack," nonviolent resistance proved to be the most powerful attack imaginable on the powers King and Gandhi were trying to overturn. The writings of both men are filled with references to love as a powerful force against oppression, and while the two leaders were not using the term" force" in the military sense, they certainly regarded nonviolence as a tactical weapon as well as an expression of high moral principle." Susan Jacoby (p. 196)
Les paroles de Jésus me reviennent à l'esprit : "Car vous ne savez ni le jour ni l'heure". Pat les connaît lui. Et de les savoirs, il meurt avant même de mourir.
"Don't you miss having a man? Don't you want to get married?"
He [Patrick Sonnier] is simple and direct. I'm simple and direct back.
I tell him that even as a young woman I didn't want to marry one man and have one family, I always wanted a wider arena for my love. But intimacy means a lot to me, I tell him. "I have close friends - men and women. I couldn't make it without intimacy."
"Yeah?" he says.
"Yeah," I say. "But there's a costly side to celibacy, too, a deep loneliness sometimes. There are moments, especially on Sunday afternoons, when I smell the smoke in the neighborhood from family barbecues, and feel like a fool not to have pursued a "normal" life. But, then, I've figured out that loneliness is part of everyone's life, part of being human - the private, solitary part of us that no one else can touch." (p. 127)
L'hymne s'élève :
Si tu traverses le désert
Tu ne mourras pas de soif ...
Ne crains pas, je marche devant toi ...
Si tu te tiens devant les feux de l'enfer
Et que la mort t'attend,
Ne crains pas ...
if we believe that murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just individuals but governments as well. And I end by challenging people to ask themselves whether we can continue to allow the government, subject as it is to every imaginable form of inefficiency and corruption, to have such power to kill. (p. 130)
Who killed this man [Patrick Sonnier]?
Nobody.
Everybody can argue that he or she was just doing a job - the governor, the warden, the head of the Department of Corrections, the district attorney, the judge, the jury, the Pardon Board, the witnesses to the execution. Nobody feels personally responsible for the death of this man. (p. 101)
Patrick had asked why people wanted to kill Mr. Sonnier.
"Because they say he killed people," Bill had answered.
"But, Dad"," Patrick had asked, "then who is going to kill them for killing him?" (p. 60)
In sorting out my feelings and beliefs, there is, however, one piece of moral ground of which I am absolutely certain: if I were to be murdered I would not want my murderer executed. I would not want my death avenged. Especially by government - which can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill. (p. 21)